Documentary Movies 2019 List

With Ryan White

Ask Dr. Ruth chronicles the incredible life of Dr. Ruth Westheimer, a Holocaust survivor who became America's most famous sex therapist. With her diminutive frame, thick German accent, and uninhibited approach to sex therapy and education, Dr. Ruth transformed the conversation around sexuality. As she approaches her 90th birthday and shows no signs of slowing down, Dr. Ruth revisits her painful past and unlikely path to a career at the forefront of the sexual revolution.

With Werner Herzog • André Singer

Werner Herzog and André Singer’s riveting documentary, filled with unforgettable archive materials and based on three never before seen interviews, provides incredible access to, arguably, the world’s greatest living politician. Now 87 and battling illness, the visionary Mikhail Gorbachev, former General Secretary of the U.S.S.R, is still gently but resolutely pushing towards his goals.

With John Chester

Documents an attempt to develop a sustainable farm by reawakening the ecosystem on 200 acres just an hour north of Los Angeles.

With Andrey M Paounov • Christo

Ten years after the passing of his wife and creative partner, Jeanne-Claude, Christo sets out to realize The Floating Piers, a project they conceived together many years before. Boasting uncensored access to the artist and his team, Walking on Water is an unprecedented look at Christo’s process, from the inception through to the completion of his latest large-scale art installation, a dahlia-yellow walkway atop Italy’s Lake Iseo that was eventually experienced by over 1.2 million people.

With Kevin Mann • Christopher Boyd • Alex Horwitz

Celebrated journalist and author Malcolm Gladwell leads the first comprehensive documentary look at self-driving cars in Autonomy. The film is a cinematic exploration of the world of automated vehicles — from their technical history to the personal narratives of those affected by them to the many unanswered questions about how this technology will affect modern society. Autonomy features interviews with industry pioneers and scenes with cutting-edge “AVs” in action around the world. Inspired by a special issue of Car and Driver, Autonomy reinforces the context of where the “car” meets the coming revolution in mobility, presenting an essential primer on the subject and how it will affect you.

With A.J. Eaton

David Crosby reflects on his life of music stardom, while forging new oaths to relevancy at his age of 77 in this deeply personal documentary.

With Frédéric Tcheng • Roland Ballester • and Paul Dallas

Documents the famous American fashion designer.

With Andrew Slater • Eric Barrett

Echo In The Canyon celebrates the explosion of popular music that came out of LA’s Laurel Canyon in the mid-60s as folk went electric and The Byrds, The Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield and The Mamas and the Papas gave birth to the California Sound.

With Jill Magid

Known as “the artist among architects,” Luis Barragán is among the world’s most celebrated architects of the 20th century.

With Brian Grazer • Nigel Sinclair • Ron Howard • Mark Monroe • Michael Rosenberg

A documentary about Luciano Pavarotti featuring memorable performances, including classic songs from Pavarotti’s Three Tenors days and previously unseen footage.

With Bill Murray • Jason Baffa • Carl Cramer

The documentary shows how golf caddies often act as advisors, counselors, and confidants on the course.

With Gene Graham

Every Thursday Night hundreds of women gather for a potluck celebration and the chance to throw singles at the hottest dancers in New Jersey, The Nasty Boyz — featuring Satan, Mr. Capable, Fever, Young Rider and lesbian 'dom' dancer Blaze.

With Martin Scorsese

Documents the troubled spirit of America in 1975 and the joyous music that Bob Dylan performed during the fall of that year.

With Harrison Ford • David Fairhead

A documentary about astronaut Neil Armstrong. The film includes never-before-seen family home-movie footage and photos.

With Bethany Hamilton • Aaron Lieber

Bethany Hamilton is rewriting the rules on being a fearless athlete. This is the untold story of the heart of a champion and her resilience against all odds to become one of the leading professional surfers of our time.

With Paul Haggis • Dan Krauss

5B is the story of everyday heroes, nurses and caregivers who took extraordinary action to comfort, protect and care for the patients of the first AIDS ward unit in the United States.

With Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

A documentary about the life and works of the acclaimed novelist, Toni Morrison.

With Oliver Murray

Throughout his three-decade career as a founding member of and bassist for The Rolling Stones, Bill Wyman was known to the world as the “quiet one” in the band. Now, the famously private music legend speaks out about his extraordinary life and experiences as part of “the greatest rock and roll band in the world.”

With Steven Bognar • Julia Reichert

A Chinese billionaire opens a new factory in the husk of an abandoned General Motors plant and hires 2,000 blue-collar Americans. Early days of hope and optimism diminish into China clashes with working-class America.

With Frank Simon

Decades before Paris Is Burning and RuPaul's Drag Race, this ground-breaking documentary about the 1967 Miss All-America Camp Beauty Pageant introduced competitive drag to the world, along with LGBTQ icons Flawless Sabrina and Crystal LaBeija. Watch for Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick as pageant judges.

With Alex Holmes

Maiden is the story of how Tracy Edwards, a 24-year-old cook in charter boats, became the skipper of the first ever all-female crew to enter the Whitbread Round the World in 1989. Tracy’s inspirational dream was opposed on all sides: her male competitors thought an all-women crew would never make it, the chauvinistic yachting press took bets on her failure, and potential sponsors rejected her, fearing they would die at sea and generate bad publicity. But Tracy refused to give up...

With Nick Broomfield

The documentary starts on the Greek island of Hydra in 1960, where Leonard Cohen, then a struggling and unknown fiction writer, and Marianne Ihlen, a single mother with a young son, became part of community of expat artists, writers and musicians.

With Avi Belkin

A documentary look at the legendary reporter, who interrogated the 20th century’s biggest figures in his over 50 years on air.

With Troy Miller • Kathy Griffin

On May 30, 2017 an image of Griffin holding a mask that resembled the severed head of President Trump was released – the image went global and everything she had worked for in her life, vanished overnight.

With Emma Tammi • Stephen Wilkes • Bette Wilkes • Henry Jacobson

Acclaimed photographer Jay Maisel bought a six-story, 72-room building on the Bowery in 1966. Ever since, the site has served as his home, studio and repository for a breathtaking collection of items that inspires his photographic work. But now it must be emptied out following its sale in the largest private real estate deal in NYC history. As Maisel prepares for this monumental move, a true end of an era, he reflects on his life and work for the camera of his mentee, photographer and filmmaker Stephen Wilkes.

With Anton Yelchin • Garret Price

A documentary about the life and work of late actor Anton Yelchin.

With Jialing Zhang • Nanfu Wang

China’s One Child Policy, the extreme population control measure that made it illegal for couples to have more than one child, may have ended in 2015, but the process of dealing with the trauma of its brutal enforcement is only just beginning. From documentarian Nanfu Wang (Hooligan Sparrow, I Am Another You) and Jialing Zhang, the sweeping One Child Nation explores the ripple effect of this devastating social experiment, uncovering one shocking human rights violation after another - from abandoned newborns, to forced sterilizations and abortions, and government abductions. Wang digs fearlessly into her own personal life, weaving her experience as a new mother and the firsthand accounts of her family members into archival propaganda material and testimony from victims and perpetrators alike, yielding a revelatory and essential record of this chilling, unprecedented moment in human civilization.

With Victor Kossakovsky

Aquarela takes audiences on a deeply cinematic journey through the transformative beauty and raw power of water. The film is a visceral wake-up call that humans are no match for the sheer force and capricious will of Earth’s most precious element.

With Emma Tammi • Stephen Wilkes • Bette Wilkes • Henry Jacobson

Acclaimed photographer Jay Maisel bought a six-story, 72-room building on the Bowery in 1966. Ever since, the site has served as his home, studio and repository for a breathtaking collection of items that inspires his photographic work. But now it must be emptied out following its sale in the largest private real estate deal in NYC history. As Maisel prepares for this monumental move, a true end of an era, he reflects on his life and work for the camera of his mentee, photographer and filmmaker Stephen Wilkes.